The mass of history in Christmas
A Biography delves into favorite traditions.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, as the song goes. Christmas means parties and eggnog and presents and tree-trimming and, oh yes, carols on an endless loop.
How did we get here? Londonbased author Judith Flanders answers the question in her fascinating and lively new book, Christmas: A Biogra
phy (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s, 256 pp., eeeg), a detailed history that effortlessly whisks us from Biblical times to the present, with many stops along the way in various countries and cultures.
The book is stuffed with surprising revelations (why there are “12 days of Christmas,” how tipping became a holiday must, when mistletoe was first dangled overhead) and things you’ve probably never thought about as you rush around finishing last-minute shopping (when did Rudolph first flash his red nose? 1939, in a pamphlet created for retailer Montgomery Ward).
Flanders relegates the so-called “War on Christmas” to a mere footnote while happily celebrating the holiday over the centuries and debunking plenty of myths.
Eating, drinking and making merry have always been part of Christmas. In a tug of war between the religious and secular, the latter usually wins. Religion “is only one element — ultimately, and surprisingly, a small element — in Christmas as we know it,” Flanders writes.
And dreaming of an even whiter Christmas, it seems, long has been a misty-eyed tradition. We are forever
remembering “that wondrous, nostalgically flawless day that is seared in our memories, the day we can never quite recapture, the perfect Christmas.”
More fun facts:
❚ Santa and his suit: He has been called St. Nicholas and Father Christmas, but how did we get the jolly image of Santa we know today?
Think Coke!
In the 1821 book The Children’s Friend he was “Old Santeclaus” and shown as a tiny, bearded young man driving a tiny, reindeer-drawn sleigh. Later in the 19th century, illustrator Thomas Nast drew Santa as a fat, bearded fellow. But it was Coca-Cola’s ad campaign, begun in the 1930s using Haddon Sundblom’s sunny illustrations, that cemented Santa as “a white-bearded man wearing a red jacket trimmed with white fur, belted across a substantial belly, red trousers and black boots, and, frequently, a red pointed hat with white fur trim.” Ho ho ho. ❚ Finding that perfect gift: An early record of friends giving each other Christmas presents comes from the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805, when Lt. Clark’s holiday haul included “Fleeshe Hoserey (fleece hosiery, or stockings), vest drawers (a vest and drawers, or long underwear) & socks of Capt. Lewis, pr. Mockerson (a pair of moccasins).” Yep, socks, slippers and underwear, Christmas staples to this day! ❚ Eat, drink and eat and drink some more: As you’re tucking into your Christmas turkey and stuffing and quaffing Beaujolais Nouveau, consider this courtly Christmas feast thrown by England’s King John in 1213.
The king and his guests consumed 27 hogsheads of wine, 400 head of pork,
3,000 fowl, 15,000 herring, 10,000 eels,
100 pounds of almonds, 2 pounds of spices and 66 pounds of pepper.